Rene Freingruber

do you understand what just happened to one of the most used npm packages on the internet? → axios gets downloaded over 100 million times a week and today it got compromised → an attacker hijacked the npm credentials of a lead axios maintainer… changed the account email to an anonymous ProtonMail address… and manually published two poisoned versions → axios@1.14.1 and axios@0.30.4… neither version contains a single line of malicious code inside axios itself. instead they inject a fake dependency called plain-crypto-js that drops a remote access trojan on your machine → the fake dependency was staged 18 hours in advance… three separate payloads were pre-built for macOS, Windows, and Linux… both release branches were hit within 39 minutes. every trace was designed to self-destruct after execution too → there’s no tag in the axios GitHub repo for 1.14.1. it was published outside the normal release process entirely... bypassed CI/CD completely → StepSecurity called it one of the most operationally sophisticated supply chain attacks ever against a top 10 npm package → a routine npm install silently opens a backdoor… no warning… no suspicious code visible in axios itself this is the wake up call all vibe coding bros need to hear right now: → if you installed either version… assume your system is compromised → pin to axios@1.14.0 or axios@0.30.3 → rotate all secrets, API keys, SSH keys, and credentials on affected machines → check network logs for C2 connections → add –ignore-scripts to CI npm installs going forward 100 million weekly downloads and one compromised maintainer account… that’s all it took to wreak absolute havoc and I imagine we see a whole lot more of these… crazy times ahead for cybersecurity and vibe coding be safe out there y’all

🚨 CRITICAL: Active supply chain attack on axios -- one of npm's most depended-on packages. The latest axios@1.14.1 now pulls in plain-crypto-js@4.2.1, a package that did not exist before today. This is a live compromise. This is textbook supply chain installer malware. axios has 100M+ weekly downloads. Every npm install pulling the latest version is potentially compromised right now. Socket AI analysis confirms this is malware. plain-crypto-js is an obfuscated dropper/loader that: • Deobfuscates embedded payloads and operational strings at runtime • Dynamically loads fs, os, and execSync to evade static analysis • Executes decoded shell commands • Stages and copies payload files into OS temp and Windows ProgramData directories • Deletes and renames artifacts post-execution to destroy forensic evidence If you use axios, pin your version immediately and audit your lockfiles. Do not upgrade.

We asked Claude to find a bug in Vim. It found an RCE. Just open a file, and you’re owned. We joked: fine, we’ll switch to Emacs. Then Claude found an RCE there too. Full story: blog.calif.io/p/mad-bugs-vim…

📣New OST2 class release!📣 The TPM trilogy is complete! "TC1103: Advanced TPM usage" by Dimi Tomov is now public at ost2.fyi/TC1103! Learn about advanced TPM policy access controls, protecting external keys in a TPM, implementing maximum security TPM-backed FDE, and more!

Book for the weekend just arrived in time

I wrote a little piece on how to modify CrystalC2's default memory allocation and freeing strategies. rasta-mouse.gitbook.io/crystalc2/docu…

Awesome folks at @SpecterOps dropped #OktaHound extension. #okta #identitysecurity specterops.io/blog/2026/03/2…

In our latest post, researcher @craigsblackie documents attacks against the Dell UEFI firmware that enable DMA attacks against TPM-only bitlockered devices mdsec.co.uk/2026/03/disabl…

[RELEASE] Better late than never! Part 3 is out! Fantastic unwind information and where to find them. We went digging through .pdata, RTF Lookups, and a few ntdll internals that probably weren't meant to be touched. BYOUD dropping alongside. Enjoy 😉 klezvirus.github.io/posts/Byoud/

LiteLLM IS BACKDOORED! On March 24, 2026, version 1.82.8 of LiteLLM was pushed to PyPI containing a malicious .pth file called "litellm_init.pth". That file executes automatically on every Python process startup, 1.82.7 has also been compromised xda-developers.com/popular-python…

🚨 Security Alert 🚨 The PyPI package litellm has been found to contain a malicious payload in versions 1.82.7 and 1.82.8. If you're using these versions, take immediate action to review and mitigate potential impact. More details will be shared soon.

How one git push --force compromised thousands of CI pipelines (Trivy attack): ⓵ Steal a maintainer's PAT ⓶ git tag -f v0.34.2 && git push -f origin v0.34.2 ⓷ Every workflow using v0.34.2 now runs your code ⓸ Dump /proc/*/mem of the Runner.Worker process ⓹ Grep for "isSecret":true and harvest every secret No branch protection fires. No review required. No status check runs. Tags are unprotected by default. GitHub has tag rulesets but almost nobody enables them.

Important security announcement for Trivy users: github.com/aquasecurity/t…

Supply chain attacks propagate through relationships. Shai-Hulud 2.0 proved it. @c0kernel breaks down the worm used in the attack as an attack graph & introduces NPMHound, which can be used to model NPM dependencies in BloodHound. Read for more! ⤵️ ghst.ly/4smZVqE

#ESETresearch analyzed more than 80 EDR killers, seen across real-world intrusions, and used ESET telemetry to document how these tools operate, who uses them, and how they evolve beyond simple driver abuse. welivesecurity.com/en/eset-resear… 1/6

RE//verse 2026 talks are live on YouTube! Want to revisit a talk or catch the ones you missed? The full playlist is now available: youtube.com/playlist?list=…

Move from basic fuzzing to a high-performance workflow. Fuzzing 1001 ost2.fyi/Fuzz1001 bridges the gap between theory and practical research. Master AFL++, PCGUARD, LTO, and ASAN using real CVEs from Xpdf and tcpdump.

If you are in the UK we are looking for a principal security researcher to join the team. If you have a threat hunting or incident response background, especially if you deeply understand Entra and other Azure technologies, this may be the role for you apply.careers.microsoft.com/careers/job/19…

We're looking for people with real offensive security experience (vuln research, rev, pentesting etc.) who've started pulling frontier models into their workflow and want to go deeper. This will be scrappy, iterative, hands-on-keyboard research.